Fortunately, Alice had no intention of hiding. She had acquired a few tricks since that first night, and now she reached for the deep blue thread that led to the last creature she’d conquered. Letting the Swarm thread go, she wrapped the devilfish thread around herself, over and over until its power flooded through her body and she began to change.

There was a nauseating moment of fluidity between forms, but then her new body settled into place. She’d become an enormous, vicious-looking fish with a broad, fan-shaped tail and hundreds of tiny needle-sharp teeth. Patches of scales on her flanks glowed, turning the pool into a weird, flickering nightmare of shadow and unearthly green radiance, but the dinosaur was easily visible as it paddled toward shore. With a flick of her tail, Alice-the-fish surged forward, her jaw opening wide.

The dinosaur heard her coming, and lowered its horns in her direction, but in this form Alice was far more agile in the water. She darted easily around the clumsy thing and went for its shoulder, farther back than it could twist its head to snap at her. The strength in the devilfish’s jaw was immense, and it felt like the easiest thing in the world to drive those hundreds of teeth through tough, scaly skin and into muscle. Blood filled Alice’s mouth; had she still been a girl, she would have gagged, but to the fish, the taste was heavenly.

Instead of ripping and tearing, as a real fish might have, Alice pulled. The dinosaur was a clumsy swimmer, and though it thrashed its legs, it was unable to resist being drawn back and down into the center of the pool until its head was completely underwater. Once she had it there, there was nothing to do but wait for it to give in. The creature’s struggles became increasingly frantic, but Alice felt nothing but comfortable, warm water sluicing easily through her gills.

Submit, she thought at the dinosaur, extending her will. Submit. She could escape the prison-book by killing the prisoner, but she didn’t like to do that if she didn’t have to, even if it was only a dumb animal. Even the stupidest creatures, she’d found, could understand the concept of dominance.

Eventually, the dinosaur got the message. She could feel its resistance collapse, the essence of its spirit twining out into a thread that would be forever linked to her. As it did, the world began to fade away as the magic of the prison-book recognized that she’d accomplished her task and sent her back to where she’d come from.

When reality snapped back, for a horrible moment she was drowning, choking, flopping wildly in a strange, alien environment. Hurriedly, she unwrapped the devilfish thread. A moment later, she was a girl again, lying on her back and gasping for breath, dripping muddy water onto Geryon’s study rug.

Chapter Two: The Way Forward

CHAPTER TWO